There are some areas of human experience that should undeniably be taken seriously and any attempt to engage with such themes – or position others to engage with them – should be given due care and consideration. At the same time, an overemphasis on the ethically fraught nature of certain phenomena and the formation of…
Gamification and Tourism
Back in late 2018, I spent a weekend away in Torquay, a small coastal town (or ‘seaside resort‘ according to Wikipedia) on the southern edge of Australia. It can be a cold place this time of year. So cold, in fact, that some evidence suggests I kidnapped my partner and forced her to endure the…
Gamified Dystopias III – Nerve
My previous two blogs looked at dystopian depictions of gamification on the small screen via Charlie Brooker’s TV series Black Mirror and the likely even smaller screen via the short film Sight. It’s now time to turn to an example that brought gamified processes and practices to the big screen: Henry Joost and Ariel Schumann’s 2016…
Gamified Dystopias II – Black Mirror
There’s something remarkable in the moment when the last frame of a film fades to black, the credits begin to roll, and the audience sits dead silent in the stillness; when there’s no immediate movement for the door as everyone remains in their seats, half-stunned and half-pondering the world they’ve just visited. Not many films…
Gamified Dystopias I – Sight
Gamification is not always an easy sell – and this is the case even when you’re not trying to sell something. There are genuine and reasonable concerns to be had around gamification in certain contexts, particularly when the thing being gamified is consumer behaviour. Yet rational critiques are not always the staple of a society…
Results
This week I started as a Senior Communications Advisor for the Covid Response team within the Dept of Health. I have been amazed by how much I have learnt, and am seriously loving every minute! The best bit has been realising that I’m actually good at this, picking up things communications professionals with years of…
A Hand Held Out
Memories of Graeme Kinross-Smith (1936 – 2021) Writing and tennis. Politics and Paris. Climate change and jazz. City and country. History and movies. Family and dogs. It stands to reason that a single person must surely have a limit to the themes they can be so deeply passionate about. But the depths of Graeme Kinross-Smith…
Play or Perish? Motivation and Habit-Building
I’ve shown students a *lot* of videos over the years, but there is one in particular that stands out to me as endlessly valuable. Before I explain why, I recommend having a watch of it below. I know these days it can be a lot to ask anyone to give their attention to something that…
Our World, Gamified
Let’s start with a story: A young couple are driving through the outer suburbs of Melbourne; the driver listens to some podcast or other while his partner flicks through social media on her phone. Looking up from the passenger seat, the woman sees that out the windscreen in the distance, perhaps 200 metres ahead, the brightly coloured sign…
When Students Do Something
This blog was inspired by a tweet I saw several days ago, and a few more I’ve seen since… Well, that’s how this blog was meant to begin. More than six months later, I’m at long last getting around to finishing it. The final catalyst for this post was an email I recently received from…
Adam Brown 